


Semi

by patchfire, raving_liberal



Category: Glee
Genre: Alive Finn Hudson, Car Accidents, Episode: s05e03 The Quarterback Fix-It, Fix-It, Fuckurt Trope Bingo, Fuckurt Week, Gen, Kittens, M/M, Not Really Character Death, Presumed Dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-28
Updated: 2015-08-28
Packaged: 2018-04-17 17:14:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4674878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patchfire/pseuds/patchfire, https://archiveofourown.org/users/raving_liberal/pseuds/raving_liberal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Of course he got out of the truck to rescue a kitten.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Semi

**Author's Note:**

> Fuckurt Trope Bingo Square: 5x03 Fix-It

The line of cars hasn’t moved at all in the last twenty minutes, which means Finn is already late meeting Puck at the movie. Whatever stupid construction project the DOT has doing on right now isn’t the best-managed one, because they don’t even have a guy out there directing traffic or anything. It’s just gridlocked for no good reason.

Finn stares out the window of his unmoving truck, singing along with the radio. Something in the grass on the side of the road moves. The something is bright orange and very small. Finn rolls down his window and leans out, squinting to see whatever it is. The orange thing moves again and lets out a surprisingly loud high-pitched noise, which clarifies for Finn that it’s a kitten. Finn leans farther out the window and makes a clicking sound with his tongue. The kitten looks in Finn’s direction and cries again, sounding absolutely pitiful. 

Since the cars aren’t moving anyway, Finn makes sure his parking brake is on and gets out of his truck. He mostly expects the kitten to run away as soon as he approaches it, but instead it just cries even louder, shivering. Its coat is matted in spots, but it’s definitely orange and fluffy. Finn looks around for a mom cat or any other kittens, but the kitten appears to be alone. Looking for the mom reminds Finn that he had seen an orange cat on the side of the road the day before, probably hit by a car. If that cat was this kitten’s mom, then the kitten’s probably going to starve to death if Finn doesn’t save it. 

“Come here, little guy,” Finn says, getting down on one knee to slowly reach for the kitten. It flinches away from his hand at first, but then it starts to cry again and lets Finn carefully scoop it up. It fits in one hand. “Aw, you’re so tiny!”

The kitten mews again as Finn stands up, brushing dirt off his knee. “Since I’m gonna miss the movie anyway, I’ll just take you to the vet,” Finn tells the kitten, who does at least seem interested in the sound of his voice. “Puck’ll understand. He’s kind of a kitten-saver-type, too. I’ll just call him from the—”

Finn is interrupted by a loud crash and scrape of grinding metal. He turns towards the road just as a semi smashes through the line of cars, rushing them as the driver jerks the wheel. The semi jackknifes and then flips and rolls, right over Finn’s truck, before coming to a stop. The bed of Finn’s truck looks more or less untouched, but the cab is completely crushed, as are the cars directly in front and in back of it.

“Uh, I guess I’m not driving to the vet,” Finn says, not sure how else to react to the scene in front of him. He reaches for his phone in his back pocket. “I’ll call Puck and— Oh. Well, shit.” The phone isn’t there. Finn can already hear emergency vehicles on the way, a combination of police, fire, and ambulance sirens, and maybe being on the side of the road this close to the wreckage isn’t a good idea. He doesn’t think he can help anybody in the crushed vehicles, but he can at least wait and talk to the police when they arrive, so he walks up the street to where the construction is and waits. 

The kitten continues to mew pitifully, so Finn puts him in the front pocket of his shirt, which the kitten seems to like, because it stops crying and curls up, just the top of its head poking out of the pocket. When a police car stops by the construction area, Finn flags it down and explains what he saw. The officer takes his statement, the kitten occasionally popping its head out of the pocket, much to the officer’s amusement. Finn walks the officer down to his own truck, or what’s left of it, explaining he’d gotten out of it for the kitten.

“That cat must be your guardian angel, then,” the officer says, “because you’re lucky to be alive.”

“Well, it seems like a pretty good cat,” Finn agrees.

After about an hour, with more emergency vehicles on scene, the original officer Finn had talked to heads back towards his car to go back into service. Finn follows the officer to the car.

“You couldn’t drop me off at a vet’s office, could you?” Finn asks. 

“For your lucky kitten? Sure,” the officer says, gesturing to the passenger side door. 

Since Finn hasn’t ever ridden in a police car before, the short drive to the vet’s office is pretty fun, even if Finn is still super shaken up from the accident and the fact that he could have _died_ – if it weren’t for the guardian angel kitten, anyway. 

 

Puck knows there’s a lot of construction happening, so when Finn doesn’t show up and ten minutes have passed since they were supposed to meet, Puck sends Finn a quick text asking if he’s stuck in traffic. There’s another showing later; Puck can always get tickets for it. Finn doesn’t respond, so Puck sends another text after five or ten more minutes, and this time Puck’s phone acts confused, like it can’t decide if the text really got delivered or not. After a little longer, Puck decides to just drive down and see if the traffic’s as bad as he thinks it is. 

The traffic is much worse than Puck had thought, because traffic going in the other direction, the way Finn was driving, is completely stopped because of what looks like a ten or twelve vehicle accident, including at least one semi. Everyone on Puck’s side of the road is slowing down to gape at the accident, which is why Puck is going slowly enough to recognize what he is pretty sure is Finn’s truck in the middle of it. 

Puck pulls over to the shoulder as quickly as he can, his stomach sinking, and he pulls out his phone, this time calling Finn. The call never quite connects; it rings once on the second try, but then disconnects, and that’s the closest the system gets. Puck doesn’t know that it means any definite, but it means something _bad_ , and he realizes he probably should call Carole before he tries to decide what to do next. He has her number at least, and he winces a little as that call immediately goes through, followed by her answering. 

“I think maybe—this wreck, Finn’s truck, I think—” Puck blurts out, not really sure if he can make it into a complete, coherent statement. 

“Noah?” Carole says, sounding confused. “What wreck? Has Finn been in an accident?”

“We were going to meet at the movie theater, and he didn’t respond to any texts, so I drove back down here, and there’s this huge multi-vehicle thing on the other side,” Puck says. “And my phone can’t connect to his, it doesn’t ring really.” 

“Here, I’m turning on the news now,” Carole says. “Is there a helicopter over you right now? I think I see you.”

Puck looks up, because he hadn’t registered most of the sounds around him. “Oh, yeah, I guess there is. I can’t see most of the wreck from here, on the ground.” 

“Are you saying Finn was in this wreck? Is he with you now? Did he have to got to the hospital?”

“I saw his truck,” Puck explains. “His truck is, like, it’s crushed. I don’t know where he is.”

Carole makes a choking noise. “Oh. Oh God. Oh, Noah, do you think he’s still in the truck? What do we do? Oh, oh, I need to call Burt. We need to call the hospitals!”

“I don’t know what to do.” Puck bites on his lip to keep himself from screaming or something else that might make them both more upset. “I can… come there? Call Kurt?” 

“Oh. Yes, I think that sounds good,” Carole says. She sounds like she has started to cry. “I’m going to start calling hospitals.”

“Okay. I’ll call Kurt and then drive again,” Puck says. Maybe if he focuses on what he needs to do, he can at least make it to Carole’s, and maybe she’ll have found Finn at the hospital. He drives up the shoulder so there’s less of the now-omnipresent helicopter noise, then calls Kurt, muttering to himself as it rings. “Pick up, pick up.” 

“Hello? Puck?” Kurt says. 

“Kurt. Hi. Um. There’s… a problem. A situation. We don’t know where Finn is, and there’s this bad wreck, and—” Puck cuts himself off, hoping Kurt can fill in the blanks. 

“Finn’s been in an accident? Or he’s missing?” Kurt asks. 

“His truck’s all crushed. Carole’s calling hospitals, his phone isn’t working now, I don’t know where he is,” Puck says, because if he keeps insisting that he doesn’t know exactly where Finn is, he doesn’t have to think about just how crushed the front of Finn’s truck is, or how part of the semi’s trailer is still on top of it. 

“Oh my God!” Kurt says. “I’m coming home. I’m going to get on the next plane!”

Puck doesn’t know if that’s a good idea or not, but it probably sounds better to Kurt than sitting around and waiting for more phone calls. “Okay. Yeah. I’m going to your house. I guess people’ll go there.” 

“Okay. I’ll text my flight information. Let me know when you find out which hospital,” Kurt says. 

“Yeah, okay,” Puck says, hoping he can actually do that. He’s not sure if he or Kurt ends the call first, but he futilely tries Finn’s number one more time before putting his phone away and heading toward the Hudson-Hummel house. 

When he gets there, he lets himself in, since he normally would and Carole might be on the phone. “Carole?” he calls. “Did you find a hospital?” 

Carole shakes her head, her eyes red from crying. “I started with St. Rita’s and Lima Memorial, but they don’t have him or anyone fitting his description, so I tried the Level I trauma centers up in Toledo. They do have two people from the accident, but neither one could be Finn.”

“Okay.” Puck bites at his lip again. “State Highway Patrol was there. Should we call them?” 

“Burt tried. They couldn’t give him any information about the victims, just that they haven’t been able to get the trailer off of some of the cars yet,” Carole says, starting to cry harder. “Oh, Noah, what if my baby is trapped under that trailer?”

Puck shudders a little, because he knows what it means, because he saw it, and he doesn’t want to think that yet. The time his phone says insists it’s been barely an hour since he was supposed to meet Finn at the movie theater, and most of his brain hasn’t caught up. There’s no way this is actually reality. 

“I don’t know,” Puck says quietly. “I don’t know.” 

Puck and Carole sit in the living room silently, Carole still crying, and about five minutes before Burt gets there, Puck gives in and lets himself start crying, wiping his eyes on the pillow closest to him. Puck’s still crying when his phone alerts him to a text from Kurt, that he’s about to take off and will either get a cab or rent a car when he lands in Ohio. 

“I’m going to call the Highway Patrol again,” Burt says. “Maybe they can tell me something now.” 

Carole starts crying even harder. “I just want somebody to find my baby!”

Puck doesn’t say anything, just shakes his head as he buries his face in the pillow. Part of him _doesn’t_ want them to find Finn. As long as the Highway Patrol doesn’t tell Burt anything official, Puck doesn’t have to give in to the feeling in his stomach and the voice in the back of his head. Carole and Burt didn’t see the wreck up close, but Puck did, and Puck knows there’s no way, short of a miracle, that someone in the cab of Finn’s truck makes it out alive. Burt comes back in and shakes his head no, because clearly the Highway Patrol didn’t give Burt any more information one way or the other. 

It’s not even been two hours, and Puck already feels like he can’t breathe. Kurt’s going to land in another hour or so, and after he gets to Lima, there’ll be four of them, sitting and waiting to get official word of what Puck thinks they all already know, and he can’t stand it. 

 

Finn now has a cardboard carrier, a few cans of kitten formula, a few more cans of kitten soft food, and a kitten who cries when Finn puts him into the cardboard carrier. Finn sighs and puts the kitten back in his pocket, where he curls up and falls asleep. 

“Maybe I’ll name you Pocket Protector,” Finn says to the kitten. He waits outside the vet’s office for the taxi they called for him, and then loads himself and his cardboard carrier full of kitten food into the back of the taxi. He starts to tell the driver to take him back to the dorm, then realizes that his keys were in the now-crushed truck, so instead he gives the driver his home address instead. Carole has a spare set of keys to everything, just in case, as she explained it, he and Puck both got the flu and she had to come over and let herself in with soup. 

Luckily, when Finn gets to the house, he sees that Puck’s bike is parked outside. Finn isn’t quite sure how he’ll get the kitten home on a motorcycle, but it makes sense that Puck might come looking for him at the house when he didn’t show up at the movies and didn’t call. Knowing how Puck worries, he probably assumed Burt had had another heart attack or something.

Finn pays the driver and then walks up to the house, letting himself in with a, “Hey! Sorry I couldn’t call. My phone kinda got crushed!”

There’s no immediate answer, just the weird strangled sound that Puck makes when he’s really upset followed by “ _What_?” 

“Yeah, I don’t know if you saw it on the news or anything, but there was a really bad wreck on the highway,” Finn says. He walks into the living room, where he sees Puck sitting on the sofa with a pillow pressed against his face and Carole sitting next to him with Burt’s arms wrapped around her. 

“Finn!” Carole says, leaping to her feet and rushing to hug him aggressively. The kitten mews angrily in response to being squished. “Oh! There’s a cat in your pocket!”

“I must really be hallucinating now,” Puck says, his voice muffled against the pillow. 

“They confirmed that was your plate on that truck!” Burt says. 

Finn hugs his mom back, careful of the kitten. “Yeah, that’s what I was saying. My truck got smashed up by this semi. It was crazy. I think a lot of people got hurt. They were still trying to get the semi off some cars when Officer Stanski drove me to the vet’s office.”

“I don’t understand,” Puck says, barely looking up from the pillow. 

“Somebody had to give me a ride,” Finn explains. “I mean, my truck was crushed under a semi.”

“Yeah, I _saw_ that,” Puck says. “When your phone stopped working.” 

“Crap. I was worried it probably got broken,” Finn says, shaking his head.

“But Finn, how did you get out of the truck?” Carole asks.

“Well, traffic wasn’t moving, so I got out to get the kitten,” Finn says.

“Did it not occur to you to, I don’t know, use a phone at wherever you said the officer took you?” Puck asks. 

“I’ll be honest, I was pretty shaken up. I mean, that wreck happened right in front of me, and then I had this kitten, so I figured, well, it’s not the kitten’s fault there was a wreck, so probably I should just go ahead and get the kitten looked at, after I gave my statement,” Finn says. “It was pretty bad. I sorta didn’t want to stick around if I didn’t have to. I think maybe somebody was dead.”

“Yeah, like maybe someone whose truck was crushed?” Puck asks. “I drove past that, asshole.” 

“Then you saw what a mess it was!” Finn says. “Would _you_ want to stick around there?”

“How, exactly, were we supposed to know you weren’t in the damn truck?” Puck demands. 

Finn just looks at Puck oddly. “But I’m fine, so that’s how you know. Anyway, if something’d happened to me, somebody would’ve let you know.”

“No! They wouldn’t have! And it’s been more than two hours!” Puck says, looking like he’s torn between leaping at Finn or bursting into tears. 

“Finn, sweetie, we thought you were in the truck,” Carole says, still crying a little. “We thought you had been killed. It usually takes a while for the police to notify families in accidents like that. When Puck couldn’t reach you on your phone, we all assumed the worst.”

“I’m sorry, Mom,” Finn says, hugging Carole again, which makes the kitten mew again. “Oh, yeah, this is my new kitten.”

“Your new kitten,” Puck says. 

“Yeah, Officer Stanski said he was my guardian angel, because I had just gotten out of the car to rescue him when the accident happened,” Finn says. “I know we’re not supposed to have pets in the dorms, but he’s small, so I figured it would be okay.”

Puck glares at Finn. “Let me see him.” 

Finn retrieves the kitten from his pocket and hands him to Puck. The kitten seems unimpressed by the relocation, and promptly pees on Puck’s hand. Puck snorts and rubs the top of the kitten’s head with one finger. 

“I guess I’ll let Kurt know,” Burt says, sounding a little stunned still. 

“You guys _really_ all thought I was dead?” Finn asks. 

“Why would we have thought you got out of the truck to rescue a kitten?” Puck says. “That doesn’t make any sense!” 

“I couldn’t have left him there! His mom was dead! He was so tiny and all alone,” Finn says. 

Puck throws up the hand that’s not holding the kitten. “But how was I supposed to drive past and think, oh, there must’ve been a kitten!” 

“I didn’t know you were gonna drive past.” Finn reaches out for the kitten. “Can I have my kitten back?”

“No,” Puck says, pulling the kitten closer to his chest. “Did you think I was just going to go watch the movie without you and not wonder where you were?” 

“I might’ve been a little bit in shock,” Finn admits. “Also, you have kitten pee on you, so you probably give me the kitten and go wash that off.”

“No, it means he marked me. He likes me,” Puck says. “I like him. It’s good he’s loud.” 

“Yeah, I like him, too. And I like you, too, but I didn’t have to pee on you for you to know that,” Finn says.

“I’m taking all of us out to dinner!” Carole announces loudly.

“Even my kitten?”

“Even your kitten,” Carole says. “He’s a miracle kitten. He saved your life. Does he have a name?”

“I was gonna call him Pocket Protector, but now that I say it outloud in front of other people, I guess that sounds kind of dumb,” Finn says. 

“What about Semi?” Puck asks, standing up carefully with the kitten still cradled against his chest. 

“Yeah, that sounds okay, too,” Finn says. “You really thought I was dead?”

“Yeah,” Puck says quietly, leaning against Finn with the kitten between them. 

“I’m sorry. I promise I won’t ever be dead, okay?” 

“Okay, you cyborg,” Puck says. 

“We’ll just both live forever with our cat,” Finn says. “I love you, even if you worry a lot.”

“I had a good reason to worry! And you’re changing your phone number.” 

“Why?” Finn asks. 

“It’s traumatic now!” 

“Okay. New phone number. Check,” Finn says. “Can we go eat now? ‘Cause I’ve kind of had a long day.”

Puck nods. “After I, you know. Wash off the pee.”


End file.
